Republicans said it was unconstitutional. An overreach of executive power. A blatant slap at the Senate.

But when it comes to waging war over a handful of obscure recess appointments, the Senate GOP is struggling with how to respond.

They fear a knock-down, drag-out fight is exactly what the White House wants — and that President Barack Obama would use such a battle to ratchet up his campaign against a dysfunctional and gridlocked Congress. The internal debate highlights the party’s challenges, with public opinion soured on Congress and Republicans still lacking a presidential nominee to rally behind.

Ahead of a closed-door party retreat Wednesday at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, Senate Republicans suggested that they might let their business allies fight the battle over recess appointments for the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The 47-member conference didn’t reach a resolution Wednesday.

“We all view that as a power grab by the administration consistent with other things that they’ve done since he’s been in office,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a member of GOP leadership. But he added: “Timing is everything on these issues.”

“I would be surprised if you see mass reprisals,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) added. “I just don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. I don’t think anybody is going to consider that to be a very astute or intelligent thing to do.”

Any senator can use the chamber’s levers to bring business to a halt, but even those who have a history of gumming up the Senate’s work don’t seem eager to jump in.

“I don’t think that’d be a particularly effective strategy,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who threatened to stymie Senate action last summer over fiscal matters. “I would much rather pursue a positive agenda.”

Several factors appear to be limiting the Republicans. For one, Congress’s popularity is at an all-time low, meaning blocking legislation or nominations may ultimately backfire in the court of public opinion. Secondly, Republicans are making a process argument over the Senate’s constitutional advise-and-consent role, a largely inside-the-Beltway fight lost on many voters. And thirdly, even if they were to take the battle to the courts, it’s not clear if they’d have standing to sue.

And with no nominee, Republicans lack a bully pulpit like Obama’s, which he used during his State of the Union address, promising to “fight obstruction with action.”

So the GOP is deliberating whether they can do more than give angry speeches attacking the president.

“He’s not the king, he’s the president, and people elect a Congress to put restraints on the executive,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the outgoing member of leadership who organized Wednesday’s retreat. “You can be sure we’ll have a lot to say about this, and the real place to take this argument is to the most important court in the land — which is the court of the American people in November.”

Asked if that meant Republicans would take action in the Senate, Alexander was coy.

“We’ll see,” he said.

The battle began earlier this month when Obama invoked his constitutional powers of making recess appointments to install Richard Cordray to head the new CFPB, and three nominees, Sharon Block, Terence Flynn and Richard Griffin, to serve on the NLRB.

Recess appointments are hardly unusual — President George W. Bush made 61 recess appointments by this point in his term, compared with 28 for Obama.

But what made this move unprecedented was that the Senate hadn’t officially gone on recess: The body was in between so-called pro forma sessions — in which the chamber quickly gavels in and gavels out every few days — for the sole purpose of preventing recess appointments. The House had not given consent for the Senate to recess for longer than three days, as required by the Constitution.

Asked if there was anything the Senate could do to block recess appointments given Obama’s move, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told POLITICO: “No. The president made his play, and I think he did the right thing.”

The Justice Department concluded that the Senate’s pro forma sessions are a farce, and official business hardly ever occurs in those breaks since senators are back home in their states.

Still, litigation is almost certain to ensue, and it seems likely that a company affected by a CFPB or NLRB decision would file the lawsuit. Senate Republicans could file an amicus brief in support of that effort.

“There will be a court case one way or another, and that’s how this will be resolved,” said Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho).

In the House, Republicans want to keep attention on the issue, with Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) planning to hold a hearing Feb. 15 to investigate the recess appointments. And Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Wednesday his staff is in the process of identifying witnesses and experts for a series of hearings examining what would happen to CFPB regulations and NLRB decisions if the courts toss out the appointments.

“My view is that every president pushes the envelope in trying to become effectively a petty dictator,” said Issa, also a member of the Judiciary Committee.

There’s little legal precedent for challenging such appointments — and none during pro forma sessions, a tactic Reid started in Bush’s second term to deny his recess appointments.

The late Sen. Ted Kennedy filed a complaint in 2004 challenging the constitutionality of Bush’s recess appointment of Judge William Pryor to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Kennedy argued that the Senate had been adjourned for only 10 days and that the break did not constitute an official recess, but he lost that challenge.

Martin Gold, a chief expert in Senate procedure, said one option is for Republicans to make the case to the public that Obama’s recess appointments amount to an abuse of power by the executive branch and a flouting of the Constitution.

But he acknowledged that Republicans could lose the argument in trying to explain complicated and arcane Senate rules and procedures such as the pro forma session.